Charm Offensive
by Lirillith
Summary: Pao-lin has a bit of a crush on Karina. Karina has some career advice and makeup tips for Pao-lin.


The lipstick isn't a stick, it's a brush. It's paint, or nail polish, or ink, and Pao-lin thinks about the calligraphy lessons her parents made her take as Karina leans in toward the mirror and paints a pink not far off their natural color onto her lips.

"Would that work on me?" Pao-lin asks, abruptly, not even sure where the question comes from.

"What... lipstick? Of course it would! Do you want me to try?"

"I dunno, I... kinda? I mean, I'm just curious." How it feels. What it's like to be like Karina, so pretty and so comfortable with it, able to change into Blue Rose so easily even though that's not what she's really like at all.

"I'm not sure this is exactly the right shade for you, but if I take you out shopping to give you a full makeover you'll probably freak out and change your mind, right?"

Pao-lin would _like_ to deny that, but she has to admit Karina knows her pretty well. "Can't we just try this and see if I look like a clown first? If it works maybe you can—" Karina's eyes light up at that, and Pao-lin cuts off abruptly.

"Okay, we'll start small," Karina says. "Close your eyes and— no, don't pucker up like that. Just relax. Sit down, okay?"

Pao-lin moves over to one of the locker room benches — the room's set up for a good half-dozen women, even though it's just the two of them — and sits down. She feels Karina's hands on her cheek, her chin, tilting her face slighly, and then the cool sweep of the brush over her lips, but all she can see is Karina's face, half-made-up but still flawless, the curve of her eyelashes and the way she purses her lips as she concentrates, her eyes not on Pao-lin's but on her lips.

"You're blushing," Karina notes, and even if she hadn't been before Pao-lin probably would have started to at that. "There's no need to be embarrassed," she adds. "If you don't like how it looks, you can just wipe it right off and no one but me will ever know."

Pao-lin wants to protest that — it's not about anybody knowing, because _she'll_ know — but she knows better than to move her lips before Karina runs a tissue just under the corner of her mouth, then pulls back, surveys her, and nods approvingly.

"It's not quite right for your coloring, but it's not bad," she says, smiling approvingly. "Just a second, I'll get a hand mirror."

Pao-lin waits, even though it seems to her like it'd take less time to get up and look in the mirror on the wall. Karina brings her a Blue Rose mirror, a cheap plastic toy for kids, light blue plastic rim decorated with darker blue roses, and there'll be a photo or a cartoon likeness of Blue Rose on the back. Inside the mirror itself, Pao-lin doesn't look that different; her lips are a little pinker, a little shinier, but she doesn't look like a fake, she doesn't look like a kid playing dress-up, a poor imitator of Agnes or Karina or Nathan.

"If you'd let me, I'd love to pick out some makeup just for you and try it out on you," Karina says. "You're so pretty, you should play it up a little. Just a tiny bit. I know you don't like to do any more than that."

"I don't even want to do a tiny bit," Pao-lin says, watching the mirror to make sure she's not blushing. Karina said she was pretty. "If I'm pretty, why do I need makeup?"

"It's not _needing_ makeup," Karina says. "It's about highlighting your best features... sometimes it's about creating a persona, like with Blue Rose. And probably Nathan, too, if you ask me."

"Huh." Not how Pao-lin was used to thinking of it.

"And you said your manager's already asked you to be a little more eye-catching. As you get older, they'll want you to highlight your looks more. They can't keep calling you a kid forever, you know?" Karina goes back to the wall mirror.

"I know," Pao-lin says darkly. She's been doing her utmost to never think about that.

"So you need to be proactive." Karina's putting on mascara. That's all she ever does to her eyes. Off-duty, she never wears eyeshadow, and half the time she doesn't wear earrings at all. If she does, they're always small, never dangly. "Suggest they call you Dragon... I don't know, Dragon Warrior? Flying Dragon? So they can't ambush you with 'now you're Dragon Lady.' Figure out how much makeup you're comfortable with and start using it, so they can't dictate your look for you."

Pao-lin watches Karina close up the mascara tube, tuck it and the lipstick into one part of her bag and the Blue Rose makeup into another — she showed Pao-lin the compartments once — and wonders how much of this is bitter experience and how much is the happier kind. How much say did Karina get in making up Blue Rose?

"Would you help me?" Pao-lin asks, finally. Maybe she's thinking more of Karina's hands on her face than of being a more grown-up kind of dragon, but it's not like Karina's wrong. And maybe she asks it more because she wants to see Karina smile than any other reason, but if she can take a little control of her career _and_ make Karina smile, that's a win-win situation, right?


End file.
